‘The
‘Holocaust teaches us that utmost vigilance is always needed to be able to take
prompt action in defense of human dignity and peace,’ summoning us all to renew
our commitment to ensure greater and unconditional respect for the dignity of
every person’
Pope Francis at Auschwitz, L'Osservatore Romano
The
Vatican’s permanent representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe, Msgr Janusz Urbanczyk, has marked “Holocaust Remembrance
Day” stressing, at the OSCE Permanent Council meeting, that the lessons of the
pass never be forgotten and that efforts be renewed to defend human dignity and
promote peace. Please find below the Vatican Radio – provided text of Msgr
Urbanczyk’s full statement for this day of remembrance:
***
Mr.
Chairman,
I
gladly join previous speakers in welcoming to the Permanent Council Ambassador
Mihnea Constantinescu, Chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance
Alliance. My Delegation is grateful for his presence on the occasion of the
anniversary of the liberation of the prisoners and survivors of the
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, observed on 27 January as International
Holocaust Remembrance Day.
First
and foremost, remembrance of the Holocaust, the Shoah – the planned
annihilation of the Jewish people, and the planned extermination of Roma and
Sinti and other groups of people – brings to mind all the victims of those most
heinous crimes against humanity, whose terrible suffering unmasks the complete
disregard for the inherent dignity of every person. The suffering and ultimate
sacrifice, the fear and tears, of the countless victims of blind hatred who
suffered deportation, imprisonment and death in those perverted and inhuman
places must never be forgotten.
Second,
the “Holocaust
teaches us that utmost vigilance is always needed to be able to take prompt
action in defense of human dignity and peace”, summoning
us all to renew our commitment to ensure greater and unconditional respect for
the dignity of every person. Special recognition and honour should also be
given to those who, at the risk of their own lives, strove to protect the
persecuted, their fellow men and women, resisting the homicidal folly around
them.
Third,
“[a]s
the writer Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, said, today we need
a “memory transfusion”. We need to ‘remember’, to take a step back from the
present to listen to the voice of our forebears. Remembering will help us not
to repeat our past mistakes (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 108), but also to
re-appropriate those experiences that enabled our peoples to surmount the
crises of the past”. The past must serve as a lesson for the present and for
the future, so as not to repeat history’s terrible mistakes, and ensure that
younger generations will not have to face this evil again. In this regard, the
Holy See attaches great importance and actively operates in the field of
education, especially in schools, to counter both anti-Semitism in general and
Holocaust denial in particular.
And
finally, in the face of the outright barbarism of the Holocaust, in the face of
the attempted destruction of an entire people, in the face of a cold,
relentless violence and darkness, the international community, States and
individuals must strive to live out the principles of peace, justice,
solidarity and reconciliation. They must do so for the simple reason, as Pope
Francis explained after having prayed in utter silence in the concentration
camp in July last year, that
“Cruelty
did not end at Auschwitz and Birkenau”. As such cruelty is still around today, the
International Holocaust Remembrance Day should, therefore, help us to “go beyond evil
and differences”, and open every possible pathway of peace and hope in our
world of today. In so doing, this Remembrance Day assists the international
community in creating a future in “which exclusion and confrontation give way to inclusion and
encounter, where there will be no place for anti-Semitism in any of its forms
or for expressions of hostility, discrimination or intolerance towards any
individual or people”.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman!
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